Before the First Word
A book is an object with a front, a back, pages, print, direction, and a job to do. None of that is obvious when you are four.
Experienced readers know a ridiculous amount before they read a single word.
We know which way to hold a book. We know where it begins. We know print carries meaning. We know what a title is, what an author does, where to start reading, and which direction our eyes should move.
Young children have to learn those things. These basic understandings are called concepts about print.
What feels “obvious” to an experienced reader was once something we had to learn.
Print concepts are not reading—but they help make reading possible.
Concepts about print give children a working model of what written language is and how readers interact with it. They help children understand that print—not merely the picture—is what carries the exact words of a text, that words are made of letters, that spaces separate words, and that print follows an organized path across a page.
The marks are doing a job.
Children gradually learn that written marks represent language. Pictures can support meaning, but the print is what allows a reader to recover the author's words.
Reading has a path.
Readers need to know where a line begins, which direction to move, and where to continue next. Directionality becomes especially important as children begin coordinating speech with visible print.
A sentence is not one giant string.
Spaces help children discover that spoken sentences can be represented as separate written words. Later, that awareness supports more precise attention to the words they are learning to read and write.
Readers learn how texts work.
Front covers, titles, authors, page order, illustrations, and punctuation are part of the system children learn to navigate. These conventions become increasingly automatic with experience.
By the end of this module…
- Identify important concepts about books and print.
- Explain why these understandings matter for emerging readers.
- Recognize simple ways teachers model concepts about print.
- Practice thinking like an assessor while observing a young child interact with a book.
Imagine seeing a book for the very first time.
You do not automatically know it has a front. You do not know the squiggles are more important than the pictures for reading the words. You do not know English print usually moves left to right. You do not know that “author” and “illustrator” are different jobs.
That is why concepts about print matter.
Four big things emerging readers need to figure out
Recognize a Book
Yes, this sounds obvious. But some children arrive at school with extensive book experience and others have had very little. Recognizing what a book is can be the first step toward understanding what readers do with one.
Know the Parts
Children learn to identify the front cover, back cover, pages, and spine. They also begin noticing the information books provide: title, author, illustrator, illustrations, and sometimes summaries.
Know How Reading Works
Children learn to open a book correctly, orient it right-side up, and understand the direction of print. In English and many other languages, print moves left to right. They also begin noticing letters, words, capitals, lowercase letters, and spaces.
Know What Books Are For
Books can decorate shelves beautifully, but their primary purpose is reading. Children also begin discovering that people read for different reasons: enjoyment, information, learning, curiosity, and more.
A child “reads” a familiar book from memory while looking mostly at the pictures. What can you conclude?
Point to it!
If you handed a child a picture book, could they identify these?
You ask a child to point to the illustrator. The child points to a picture in the book. Correct?
A child opens a book from the back and begins looking at it upside down. What have you learned?
Mostly by doing reading where children can see you doing it.
Model how you hold a book. Talk about the cover. Point out the title. Name the author and illustrator. Open the book from the front. Track print when useful. Notice letters, words, spaces, and direction.
Concepts about print grow through exposure, modeling, explicit teaching, and actual experiences with books.
This is one reason read-alouds do more than expose children to stories and vocabulary. They also let children watch an experienced reader operate a book.
But keep the main thing the main thing: a read-aloud should still feel like reading a wonderful book together. You do not need to interrupt every page to ask where the title is, locate a capital letter, or interrogate a four-year-old about the spine. Brief, purposeful attention to print is enough.
Your kindergarten read-aloud has stopped every 20 seconds.
You have asked students to identify the front cover, title, author, illustrator, first word, last word, capital letter, punctuation mark, and direction of print. The children have now forgotten that there is apparently a story happening.
Watch a young child work with concepts about print.
Use the video as an observation task. Watch what the child actually does rather than what you assume the child knows.
Now think like the teacher.
A concepts-about-print assessment is typically conducted one-on-one with a simple picture book. The teacher asks the child to demonstrate specific understandings and records each response.
Watch the video, then make a judgment on each item below. The point is not speed. The point is learning to observe precisely.
Score the entire assessment while you watch.
Use this complete Concepts About Print assessment while you watch. Mark 1 when the child demonstrates the concept correctly and 0 when the response is incorrect. If the video does not provide enough information for an item, use Not observed.
| Concept | Directions | Score |
|---|
The modeled assessment totaled 11.
The model scoring records correct responses for book recognition, front cover, title, author, back cover, opening a book, beginning of text, directionality, first letter in a word, identifying how many letters are in a selected word, and first word on the page. The child missed illustrator, spine, capital letter, last word, and punctuation. The last-letter item was skipped.
That gives the modeled assessment a total score of 11.
And remember the useful scoring trap: when asked for the illustrator, the child pointed to the illustration. Close is not the same thing as demonstrating the requested concept.
Why assess concepts about print at the beginning of preschool or kindergarten?
A child knows the front and back of a book, title, author, and where reading begins—but cannot reliably identify a word, a letter, or the spaces between words. What is the best next move?
Can you crack the book code?
1. Which is a concept about print?
2. A child points to a picture when asked for the illustrator. How should that response be scored?
3. What is one strong way to build concepts about print?
Go deeper without disappearing down an internet rabbit hole.
For concepts about print, the strongest next resources are the ones that connect print awareness to the larger development of early literacy rather than treating book parts as an isolated checklist.
IES / What Works Clearinghouse · Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade → National Academies · The Process of Learning to Read → NAEYC · Principles of Developmentally Appropriate Practice →Worth remembering: concepts about print are part of a much larger early-literacy system that includes oral language, phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, writing, vocabulary, knowledge, and meaningful experiences with text.
If you remember one thing…
Before children can focus on the words, they have to understand the world those words live in. Books have parts. Print has direction. Written language carries meaning. Experienced readers barely notice these rules—which is exactly why teachers have to.